Never give up on a great, crappy photo.

What a great photographic age we live in. Digital cameras! What a wonderful advancement! But then you consider all the fabulous software and it's no wonder so many folks are being turned onto photography.

Here's a photo I took on a camping trip about 40 years ago. Back then, developing photos was an expensive proposition, and many of us poorer folk settled for 35 mm slides as a cheaper alternative. That's how this photo survived for 40 years, as a slide that bounced around from house to house, state to state. I'm amazed it survived at all.

Not long ago, I unearthed my long ignored box of slides and scanned them to my Mac. They were fabulous memories, but horrible photos. But this slide caught my attention, and I hated to waste it. I opened it up in Photoshop Elements, and opened the Filter menu. It defaulted to Posterized, and I was amazed how nice it looked without even making an adjustment. I decided to save it right there, as is, and that's what you see here. I call this "On Golden Pond".

On Golden Pond - Watercolor

Elements has dozens of filter effects to play with. You can make your favorite photo look like an oil painting, add frames and mattes, or create something a bit more abstract. I used my telephoto lens to capture a full moon in Tucson one evening, and I've been wondering what to do with that nice photo. A couple years ago, I took a photo of the river in Florence, Italy. While I liked the layout on that photo, the sky was washed out and the overall photo just didn't make it. Now recently, I saw a movie of Venus passing in front of the Sun. The movie had a very pretty red sky, which for some reason made me think of the other two photos. I made a screen capture of that red sky, and used Elements to blend all three images into the following, which I call "Florence Moon".

Florence 2

My point is that if a photo has some magical aspect to it, but the photo itself isn't that great, think about other uses. Just maybe, you can turn it into a winner.

Also, please note that I am happy to create an "oil painting" version of any photo from my galleries. Just contact me and I'll show you what it will look like before you purchase.